Jessica Boles Takes Third Place in 2015 Perfect Pitch Contest

Jessica Boles, an undergraduate senior in electrical engineering at the Center for Ultra-Wide-Area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks (CURENT), at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, won third place in the 2015 ERC-wide Perfect Pitch contest for her talk on "Wireless Charging for Drones via Transmission Lines." Jessica plans to begin work towards a Ph.D. in power electronics in January 2016. She has been involved with CURENT since her freshman year through undergraduate research, CURENT’s Student Leadership Council, and working as an Undergraduate Ambassador for CURENT. In addition, Jessica served as the electrical engineering team leader for UT’s EcoCAR 3 Year 1 competition team and spent the summer of 2015 conducting research on wireless charging for drones via transmission lines at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Outside of power, Jessica devotes herself to recruiting women to the engineering field and to fostering community among those already in it. She is currently President of a student organization named Systers: Women in EECS that seeks to recruit, mentor, and retain women in her department; and she founded a women in engineering conference named WomEngineers Day for UT’s College of Engineering in April 2015. For her academic accomplishments and leadership, she has received a UT Chancellor’s Citation for Extraordinary Professional Promise, the General Motors EcoCAR 3 Outstanding Women in Engineering Award, the UT Bodenheimer Fellowship for graduate school, and four departmental outstanding student awards during her undergraduate study. Jessica looks forward to a career in research and hopes to spend it investigating power electronics for renewable energy systems.

Jessica Boles receiving her third-place award from Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), with NSF Engineering Education and Centers Division Director Dr. Mario Rotea looking on, (Credit: NSF/Sandy Schaeffer)